Q The Bush administration's handling of the war on terror
is the most talked about and controversial topic in the country these
days; hearings are being held here in Washington; books are coming out
criticizing the administration's handling of the war. As the National
Security Advisor to the President of the United States, how do you feel
about all of this?

DR. RICE: I think it's perfectly logical, Ed, that people want to
know that their country, their government, is doing everything that it
can to protect them from another event like September 11th. I think we
have to say that it's very difficult to do in an open society, and we
cannot rule out that we might have another attack - indeed, we know
that there are terrorists out there every day trying to pull off
another spectacular attack.

But I think it's perfectly logical that people want to know what
we're doing -- and we're doing a lot. Since September 11th, we have
wrapped up two-thirds of the al Qaeda leadership. The President has
liberated 50 million people in Afghanistan and in Iraq. We've taken
away their forward-operating bases around the world. We have worldwide
cooperation with places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. We really have
terrorism on the run. But this is going to be a long war against
terrorism, as the President told the American people just a few days
after September 11th.

Q Did you watch Richard Clarke's testimony last week?

DR. RICE: I watched parts of it. I had other things to do - I was
meeting with Israeli officials, I was meeting with Russian officials.
I had quite a bit to do that day.

Q If you didn't see it live, I'm certain that you saw it on
the news reports. How did you feel when he made that apology?

DR. RICE: Well, I don't think that there is anyone who is not
sorry for the terrible loss that these families endured, and, indeed,
who doesn't feel the deep tragedy that the country went through on
September 11th.

I do think it's important that we keep focused on who did this to
us, because, after all, this was an act of war, Ed. This was an act of
war unlike anything that has happened on our territory in 200 years.
And al Qaeda is responsible for what happened to us. I think that
there are good people in the Clinton administration and in the Bush
administration who were, and still are, doing everything that they
could to try and avoid any kind of catastrophic attack against the
United States. But these are cold-blooded terrorists who will kill
innocent life to promote their evil designs and we need to stay focused
on that.

But everybody feels the great tragedy that the families endured
that day and that the country endured that day.

Q But my question is, how did his apology make you feel?
Did you think he was grandstanding? Did you think it was sincere?

DR. RICE: I'm not going to question what Dick Clarke was or was
not feeling. I think, from my point of view, the families need to know
that everybody understands the deep loss. The President went, on the
first anniversary of 9/11, out to that field in Pennsylvania; he went
to Ground Zero of 9/11 at the World Trade Center; he met with the
families, he walked among them. I, took, walked among them and watched
them talk about and listened to them talk about and acknowledge the
lives of the people that they had lost. Everybody understands the deep
tragedy that has happened here.

Q One final question on his apology. When he apologized he
said, "I failed you, our government failed you - your government failed
you." Will the families of those people who were killed hear an
apology from you? Do you think that would be appropriate?

DR. RICE: The families I think have heard from this President that
- and from me, and from me, personally, in some cases - in that field
in Pennsylvania or at the World Trade Center - how deeply sorry
everyone is for the loss that they endured. You couldn't be human and
not feel the horror of that day.

We do need to stay focused on what happened to us that day. And
the best thing that we can do for the memory of the victims, the best
thing that we can do for the future of this country is to focus on
those who did this to us. This was no less an act of war than Pearl
Harbor was an act of war. We need to stay focused on what it is that
we're doing.

Q When you look back at the period of time between the
inauguration and September 11th, is there anything you wish that you
had done differently?

DR. RICE: Ed, I really can't answer that question. We were where
we were. I know what we did. I know that shortly after we came into
office, I asked the counterterrorism team --which we kept in place from
the Clinton administration in order to provide continuity and
experience -- we asked them what policy initiatives should we take.

We got a list of policy initiatives; we acted on those policy
initiatives. We felt that we were not in a position to have a
comprehensive strategy that would not just roll back al Qaeda - which
had been the policy of the Clinton administration - but we needed a
strategy to eliminate al Qaeda. And we put that work into motion.
And, in fact, that produced a comprehensive strategy several weeks
before 9/11.

But we were working on terrorism from the time that we came here.
The fact is that the country was not on war footing about al Qaeda and
terrorism until after September 11th . For the eight years of the
Clinton administration and for the first eight months of the Bush
administration, there was certainly a tremendous understanding of the
great dangers of terrorism. There was an understanding that attacks
had been made on our forced abroad; that attacks had been made, indeed,
in the United States and that more needed to be done to try and avoid
attacks in the future.

But we would not be honest with the American people if we said that
before 9/11 this country was on war footing. What the President did
after 9/11 was to declare war on al Qaeda in ways that had not been
done before.

Q But do you think that you or the administration made any
mistakes, any misjudgments between the inauguration and 9/11?

DR. RICE: I think we did what we knew how to do. We read the
threat reporting. The President was briefed by his Director of Central
Intelligence, George Tenet, 46 times with items related in one way or
another to al Qaeda. His response to that was to say, "I can't swat at
flies anymore; I've got to have a comprehensive strategy to take this
organization down."

We were discussing the threat spike that took place between June
and July, to try and figure out how to respond. Now, to be fair, the
threat reporting was all about attacks that might take place abroad -
in the Persian Gulf, or perhaps something against Israel, or perhaps
something against the G8 leader's summit that was going to take place
in Genoa that summer. And we were responding to that. I called in,
along with Andy Card, Dick Clarke on July 5th and I said, you know,
even though none of the threat reporting really is relating to the
United States, perhaps you better get the domestic agencies together
and see what we need to do to button down the country. And, in fact,
the FAA issued warnings as a result of that; the FBI issued warnings;
INS and Customs were informed about these threats. But everything
pointed to an attack abroad.

Q Let's talk for a minute about the 9/11 Commission
hearings that were held last week. The commission said that when the
Bush administration came into office, you spent eight months
considering a new strategy to combat al Qaeda, the Taliban in
Afghanistan, but took little action. The commission released findings
saying, "The new administration began to develop new policies toward al
Qaeda in 2001, but there is no evidence of new work on military
capabilities or plans against this enemy before September 11th." Would
you agree with that finding?

DR. RICE: The document to which everyone is referring, this new
policy that was going to eliminate al Qaeda, that over - and first of
all, Ed, it was a three to five year strategy to eliminate al Qaeda.
Nobody is claiming that we intended to invade Afghanistan and push the
Taliban out of power. That wasn't on the agenda in the Clinton
administration; it frankly was not on the agenda in the Bush
administration until after 9/11.

But this document did task the Defense Department to develop
contingencies that would give us more robust military options against
the Taliban, should we not be able to force them out of power through
either intelligence activities or through further diplomacy. So, in
fact, there were contingency plans that were to be drawn up by the
Defense Department to do precisely that.

Q So you disagree with the finding?

DR. RICE: I simply disagree that there was no desire to have
military options. One of the really important things here was to have
military options that would allow you to go after the Taliban's command
and control, after their leadership, to go after their ground forces.
And the Defense Department - actually, before the September 4th
document -- was tasked to do that planning.

Q Let me take -

DR. RICE: But I'd like to emphasize one thing, Ed. This was a
strategy that was a multi-year strategy. Nothing in that strategy was
going to prevent 9/11 in the seven months that we were in office.

Q But why did it take eight months to come up with a new
plan?

DR. RICE: Well, because there was a lot of work to do to come up
with a new plan, to develop a strategy that was going to get Pakistan
to change its strategic direction. Pakistan is very key in - and
Pakistan had been a supporter of the Taliban. It was important to get
the military to do some planning. It was important for a program to be
developed that would not just support the Northern Alliance, the
opposition that was in the north of the country - as a matter of fact,
locked in less than 10 percent of the north of the country - we were
going to develop a strategy to work also with southern tribes. These
were things that were going to take time.

Now, to be fair, some of these ideas had been around since 1998 and
they had not been acted on. We thought it was time to bring these
ideas together in a comprehensive strategy. I think for a new
administration, the seven-and-a-half months is actually not very long,
and in the meantime we did everything that we knew how to do to
continue pursue al Qaeda: the CIA continued its disruption activities;
we continued the work with other governments; all of us were engaged in
diplomatic activities - the President writing a letter to Musharraf of
Pakistan. We were engaged every day on the terrorism issue, but we
needed to build a new strategy that had a chance this time to eliminate
al Qaeda.

Q On Thursday, the White House indicated its willingness to
have you testify before the commission, as long as your testimony is in
private, behind closed doors, and as long as you're not under oath.
The Secretary of State, Defense, the Director of the CIA, have all
testified in public, under oath, before the commission.

If you can talk to us and other news programs, why can't you talk
to the commission in public and under oath?

DR. RICE: Ed, I have been with the commission to answer their
questions for more than four hours - about four hours. I've -

Q In private?

DR. RICE: In private. I did not testify, by the way - and this is
an important distinction. I went to meet with the commission, I
answered their questions; I'm more than happy to spend as much time as
they would like answering further questions. I've made that offer, and
we're trying to make arrangements to do that.

Nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to
testify. I would really like to do that. But there's an important
principle involved here. We have separate branches of government - the
legislative branch and the executive branch. This commission, it takes
its authority, derives its authority from the Congress, and it is a
long-standing principle that sitting National Security Advisors do not
testify before the Congress. And -

Q But there is a long list - not to cut you off, but there
is a long list of presidential advisors who have testified before the
Congress in public and under oath.

DR. RICE: Well, let me be very clear about this, because the
people who - the only National Security Advisors, sitting National
Security Advisors that to our knowledge have testified did so in
matters having to do with either criminal intent or criminal
allegations, or impropriety - not on matters of policy. Indeed, Brent
Scowcroft and Sandy Berger and Tony Lake and Henry Kissinger have all
declined to testify when matters of policy come up because it's
important for the President's close, personal staff to not breach this
line between the executive and the legislature.

What we do is to find means by which the Congress or its
commissions can get all of the information that they want and need from
the National Security Advisor. That's why my predecessors have gone,
in closed session, to brief or to talk with or to answer questions;
that's why I'm prepared to do that again.

But let me be very clear, Ed, I'm not going to say anything in
private that I wouldn't say in public. I'm legally bound to tell the
truth. I'm morally bound to tell the truth. And so I want to speak
with the commission. I know that there are people who are disappointed
that I can't. I know, for instance, the families are disappointed
that I can't testify, and I'd like very much to meet with the families
so that I can answer their questions.

Q I mean, I think unfortunately for you there are some
people who feel that the administration is hiding behind this executive
privilege, that there's something to hide.

DR. RICE: Ed, we have absolutely nothing to hide. I've already
spent four hours with the commission. I'll spend many more hours with
the commission. And one reason that I'm speaking to the press, by the
way, is that one of our constitutional protections is a free press that
can ask of national officials anything that the press wishes to ask.
And so it's perfectly natural for me to answer, through our free press,
questions that might be on the minds of the American people.

Q If they subpoena you to testify in public, under oath,
will you?

DR. RICE: Ed, I think we're not at that point. And I would
certainly hope that everyone understands that this long-standing
separation between the President's closest, personal advisors and the
Congress has to be maintained. This is not a matter of keeping
information from anyone. I'm prepared to go and talk to the commission
as often and for as long as they would like.

Q But there are some people who look at this and say that
this was an unprecedented event; nothing like this ever happened to
this country before -- and this is an occasion where you can put that
executive privilege aside; it's a big enough issue to talk in public.

DR. RICE: It is an unprecedented event. We've said that many,
many times. But this commission is rightly not concentrating on what
happened on the day of September 11th. This commission is
concentrating on all of the policies that were counterterrorism
policies, policies that did not succeed in defeating al Qaeda over a
period of a decade. And this commission is rightly looking at the
policies that are now being pursued in the war on terrorism.

So this is not a matter of what happened on that day, as
extraordinary as it is -- as it was; this is a matter of policy. And
we have yet to find an example of a National Security Advisor, sitting
National Security Advisor who has been willing to testify on matters of
policy.

Q In the eyes of the American public, do you think that the
credibility of the Bush administration has been at all damaged by your
failure to testify in public?

DR. RICE: I sincerely hope that the American people can see - and
that's why I'm here talking to you - that I want the American people to
know the story of what we did before 9/11 and what we're continuing to
do now; I want the families to know the story; most importantly, I have
an obligation to make sure that the commission knows the story. And
I'm going to do everything that I can within the bounds of keeping this
very important matter of privilege sacred and without violating it, I'm
going to do everything I can to make sure that this story is
understood; and that I'm personally willing and able to answer
questions from you, in the press - one of our constitutional
protections; and to answer to the commission. And as I've said, I
would also be happy to sit down with the families, because I know that
for them this has undoubtedly been an extremely intense period and that
they may have questions that they'd like to ask.

Q But only in private with the commission?

DR. RICE: Well, I will be with them in private, because that, Ed,
is the way that my predecessors have bridged this very difficult issue
of getting the information to the commission and to the Congress that
is needed, without violating the executive privilege.

Q Let's move on. Clarke has alleged that the Bush
administration underestimated the threat from al Qaeda, didn't act as
if terrorism was an imminent and urgent problem. Was it?

DR. RICE: Of course it was an urgent problem. I would like very
much to know what more could have been done, given that it was an
urgent problem. We were every day talking with George Tenet and with
the CIA about disruption activities, particularly in that period
between June and July. The DCI and I met practically every couple of
weeks to review where we were on getting various elements done. We had
a list of ideas that Dick Clarke and his team gave us: accelerate the
efforts to arm the Predator. We did that - the Predator being the spy
drone that could also fire. We put additional funding into
counterterrorism for the intelligence activities that we were
pursuing. We increased counterterrorism assistance to the Uzbeks, one
of our key allies in the war on terrorism. We worked to get more
people involved in countering terrorist financing.

We were looking for a more comprehensive plan to eliminate al
Qaeda, but we weren't sitting still while that plan was developing. We
were continuing to pursue the policies that the Clinton administration
had pursued.

Q But even the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, General Hugh Shelton, has said that the Bush administration
pushed terrorism - and I'm quoting here - "farther to the back burner."

DR. RICE: I just don't agree. We did have a lot of - a lot of
priorities. We did have to build a new relationship with Russia and a
new relationship with China. It's a good thing that we did with
Russia, because, after all, our ability to function in Central Asia was
very much dependent on that good relationship with Russia. Yes, we had
issues - you may remember in the early days - with the Chinese having
forced down one of our planes. Yes, there were other issues. But
terrorism was considered important enough and urgent enough that the
President had sessions with George Tenet 46 times on that issue; that
George Tenet and the rest of us were told to develop a strategy that
would not just swat flies.

I don't know, Ed, how, after coming into office, inheriting
policies that had been in place for at least three of the eight years
of the Clinton administration, we could have done more than to continue
those policies while we developed more robust policies.

Q After 9/11, Bob Woodward wrote a book, in which he had
incredible access and interviewed the President of the United States.
He quotes President Bush as saying that he didn't feel a sense of
urgency about Osama bin Laden. Woodward wrote that "bin Laden was not
the President's focus or that of his national security team." You're
saying that the administration says fighting terrorism and al Qaeda has
been a top priority since the beginning.

DR. RICE: I'm saying that the administration took seriously the
threat - let's talk about what we did, which demonstrates -

Q I understand, but you've listed -

DR. RICE: -- which demonstrates that we took this as a priority.

Q You've listed the things that you've done, but here is
the perception: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at that time
says you've pushed it to the back burner; the former Secretary of the
Treasury says it was not a priority; Mr. Clarke says it was not a
priority. And, at least according to Bob Woodward, who talked with the
President, he is saying that for the President it wasn't urgent, he
didn't have a sense of urgency about al Qaeda. That's the perception
here.

DR. RICE: Ed, I don't know what a sense of urgency, any greater
than the one we had, would have caused us to do differently. We
weren't going to invade Afghanistan in the first months of the Bush
administration. Dick Clarke, himself, said that if the strategy that
we were pursuing, that we were developing, had been completed on
January 27th, it would not have stopped 9/11. What we were trying to
do was to put together a strategy that might finally, over a period of
time, actually eliminate al Qaeda.

Now, the Clinton administration, for a period of eight years, very
intensively after the bombing attacks of 1998, worked on this problem
and they were not able to eliminate al Qaeda or even to hurt al Qaeda
enough that they didn't continue to launch attacks. The fact is that
what we needed to do was to get a more comprehensive way to deal with
this threat.

In the meantime, we continued to work under all of the authorities
that were there during the Clinton administration, we continued to work
under the policy that they had been pursuing, we continued to pursue al
Qaeda under the old strategy. But we felt that the priority should be
given to getting a new, more comprehensive way to address this threat.

Richard Clarke said that - talking about that meeting on September
12th, said the President dragged him into a room, said, "I want you to
find whether Iraq did this. He never said 'make it up,' but the entire
conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me
to come back with a report that said Iraq did this. I said, 'Mr.
President, we've done this before, we've been looking at this, we
looked at it with an open mind, there's no connection.' And he came
back and said, "Iraq, Saddam, find out if there's a connection,' and he
said it in a very intimidating way."

What's your reaction to Clarke's description of that day?

DR. RICE: I have never seen the President say anything to people
in an intimidating way to try to get a particular answer out of them.
I know this President very well, and the President doesn't talk to his
staff in an intimidating way to ask them to produce information that is
false.

The President asked, I believe - though, none of us recall the
specific conversation - the President asked a perfectly logical
question -- we had just been hit and hit hard - did Iraq have anything
to do with this, were they complicit in it? This was a country with
which we'd been to war a couple of times, it was firing at our
airplanes in the no-fly zone. It made perfectly good sense to ask
about Iraq.

But I will tell you, Ed, when we went to Camp David to plan our
response to the al Qaeda attack; it was a map of Afghanistan that was
rolled out on the table. It was Afghanistan that became the focus of
the American response. And Iraq was put aside, with the exception of
worrying about whether Iraq might try and take advantage of us in some
way. The President focused our energies and our attention on winning
in Afghanistan and expelling the Taliban and thereby expelling al
Qaeda.

Q But the appearance here, because there are other examples
of countries with state sponsored terrorism - Iran, Libya, Syria - he
didn't ask him about that; he asked just about Iraq. The perception
is, people listening to what Clarke had to say, is that the President
was preoccupied with Iraq.

DR. RICE: Given our relationship with Iraq, which was probably the
most actively hostile relationship in which we were involved, given
that they were firing at our airplanes every day, given that, I think
that it's a perfectly logical question. But I was with the President a
great deal in those first days after 9/11, and I'll tell you what was
on his mind. What was on his mind was to avoid a follow-on attack.
What was on his mind was how to reassure the American people. He was
talking many times a day with the economics advisor, Larry Lindsey,
about how to get Wall Street back up and running so the financial
system wouldn't collapse. He was concerned about how to get airplanes
flying again and was talking constantly to Norm Mineta about how to get
Reagan Airport operating again.

Those were the things that were on the President's mind. And when
we look to retaliation, yes, we asked the question, given that this is
a global war on terrorism, should we look at other threats? But I can
tell you that when we met at Camp David not a single one of the
President's principal advisors suggested that he do anything more than
go after Afghanistan, and that's what we did.

Q Al Qaeda has become a decentralized collection of
regional networks, said to be working autonomously. Does that make
them more dangerous today?

DR. RICE: They're very dangerous. I still believe that we have
done a lot to hurt this organization. We've been able, through our
international partners, to cut off a lot of their support and their
funding; we've killed two-thirds of their known leadership, and, of
course, that takes the field generals out of business, which is very
important.; we have managed to take away territory that they most want
to use - territory like Afghanistan, they can't function in Sudan, they
obviously can't function in places like Libya -- they're being pursued
in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan with an aggressiveness that was not there
prior to 9/11.

And the President has also understood that this is a wide war, not
a narrow war, on terrorism. And that when we succeed in building a
stable and democratic Iraq, we will have given a real blow to
terrorism. And that's why, Ed, Zarqawi, who is an al Qaeda affiliate,
has been writing letters about how they cannot afford to lose in Iraq.
The terrorists understand that Iraq is a central front in the war on
terrorism.

Q We've had this war on terrorism since - concentrated
since 9/11. But it's been reported that if you look at the 30 months
since 9/11, there have been more attacks by al Qaeda than in the 30
months prior to 9/11. So what effect does this taking out two-thirds
of the leadership have?

DR. RICE: We are being attacked by them because they know that
we're at war with them. And they're going to continue to attack until
we defeat them.

Q But here's what I'm saying - you had a 30-month period
leading up 9/11 in which you had fewer attacks than the 30 months
afterwards, when you have this war against them.

DR. RICE: Ed, I think that's the wrong way to look at it, with all
due respect. I think you have to look back to the '80s, and most
certainly the '90s, when what was happening is the terrorist attacks
were getting bolder, they were getting more imaginative, they were
getting more daring.

So you have the attack in '93 against the World Trade Center. You
then have the attack in 1998, against the American embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania. Then you have the attack against the Cole. Then you
have 9/11, which is a spectacular and devastating attack that, by the
way, was aimed at decapitating us. That was an act of war, going after
the Pentagon and going after, perhaps, the Capitol or the White House.
These attacks were getting bolder and they were getting more daring,
and that's because the terrorists were getting a sense of inevitability
of their victory. We were not aggressively going after them. They
believed that they were going to win. They saw us cut and run in
Somalia. They go all the way back to the fact that the Marines left
Beirut after the bombing of the barracks. They believed that if we
took casualties we would not respond. And what they've been surprised
by is the fact that this has this time has been a launching of an
all-out war against them.

And, yes, they're going to continue to try to attack, they're going
to succeed sometimes; but they are going to be defeated. And as the
President said, you cannot fight this war on the defensive. We can't
sit back here and try to defend the United States, or we will not be
the country, the open country that we know and love. So we are on the
attack against them. They know that this is all-out war, and they're
pulling out the stops.

Q Is the Bush presidency, or the Bush legacy, at stake
here?

DR. RICE: This President doesn't care about his legacy. What he
cares about is keeping this country safe and secure. We are safer
today than we were on September 10th. We're not yet safe. We've got a
lot of work to do. We've got a lot of work to do in homeland
security. We've got a lot of work to do against the terrorists
abroad. This is a war and it's going to take time. But all of the -

Q But you say we're safer - don't you expect another attack
on this country?

DR. RICE: We are still safer today because we have an umbrella of
intelligence and law enforcement worldwide. When the President sits in
the Oval every morning, he gets reports from intelligence services all
around the world. Our allies in places like Pakistan are fighting in
places that they never even went into - up in Waziristan, this lawless
part of Pakistan where al Qaeda has a safe haven.

So we are safer, but not yet safe. And we're going to have to
continue to pursue this war aggressively. The one thing that we have
to be very careful about as a country is to not lose sight of one of
the things that hurt us most, was not knowing and not having light on
what was going on inside the country with al Qaeda. There's been a lot
written about the fact that the CIA and the FBI were not sharing
information. Well, in large part, they were by tradition and culture
and legally not able to share and collect intelligence information in
the way that might have helped to keep us safe. The Patriot Act, which
the President has now gotten through Congress, is doing precisely
that. So we've a lot more tools now than we had before. But no one
should think that this war on terrorism is by any means over.

Q One final question. Is al Qaeda more dangerous today
than it was on September 11th?

DR. RICE: Al Qaeda is not more dangerous today than it was on
September 11th, but you don't have to make that choice. Al Qaeda is
dangerous. And we're going to have to pursue them and we're going to
have to defeat them, and we're going to have to change the context in
which they operate by working to develop a different kind of Middle
East, in which you don't have ideologies of hatred; in which people fly
airplanes into buildings.

This is going to be a long war. It is a comprehensive war. It is
not going to be enough to win in Afghanistan, to even kill bin Laden
and to return to law enforcement. They declared war -

Q So capturing or killing al Zawahiri doesn't -

DR. RICE: Will not end this war. What will end this war is a
sustained effort, over a long time, in which the United States
mobilizes all of its means, its military means, its law enforcement
means, its means of taking away economic support -- takes all of those
measures and pursues them on a daily basis; and in which we are not, as
a country, afraid to go after them where they live. We are not going
to be able to sit back here and fight this war on the defense.

* * * * *

Q The decision - the decision to go to war with Iraq.
Nearly 600 American soldiers have died, thousands of Iraqi civilians
have been killed and continue to die due to guerilla violence and
terrorist attacks. Given the fact that no weapons of mass destruction
have been found and there's no proof that Saddam Hussein was linked to
9/11 or al Qaeda, the country is split about why we're even in Iraq and
if we're fighting the right war.

DR. RICE: The war on terrorism is a broad war, not a narrow war.
And Iraq, one of the most dangerous regimes - I think the most
dangerous regime in the world's most dangerous region in the Middle
East - is a big reason, or was, under Saddam Hussein a big reason for
instability in the region, for threats to the United States; he was
firing at our aircraft practically every day as we tried to keep his
forces under control; he had used weapons of mass destruction; he had
the intent and was still developing the capability to do so. Saddam
Hussein's regime was very dangerous. And now that Iraq has been
liberated and that Iraq has a chance to be a stable democracy, the
world is a lot safer and the war on terrorism is well-served by the
victory in Iraq.

Q Are you prepared if they say, we don't want a democracy
in Iraq?

DR. RICE: Everything that has happened so far shows that they want
a democracy in Iraq. They're learning to compromise, they're learning
to negotiate with each other - Shia and Sunnis and Kurds and others.
They've put together a really terrific interim document called the
Transitional Administrative Law that is, by far, the most liberal
document, from the point of view of protection of human and democratic
rights, rights of women, freedom of religion. They're off to a very
good start, but it's going to take a very long time.

And, Ed, when Iraq is democratic, you're going to have one of t
lynchpins of a very different kind of Middle East. And after what
happened to us on September 11th, I think all Americans would agree
that we've got to have a different kind of Middle East, because it was
the center of gravity from which al Qaeda came.

Q If you will, may I ask you just one follow up to that?
You do expect a vote in Iraq, yes?

DR. RICE: We will have elections. There will be elections in
Iraq.

Q And if the result of those elections the Iraqi people
say, we want an Islamic republic, not a democracy?

DR. RICE: Ed, there is simply nothing that suggests that the Iraqi
people want anything but what most people in the world want - and that
is the freedom to say what they think, the freedom to send their girls
and boys to school, the ability on basis of conscience to carry out
religious practice. This is a sophisticated society, and everything
demonstrates so far that what they want is to be perhaps the first
really great democracy in the Middle East.